Regulatory Sourcebook

Official source for permitting policies, guidelines, regulations and procedures of the Baltimore District Regulatory Branch.  
About 90 percent of all District actions involving the enforcement of the wetland/waterway permit laws are referred from the public. We encourage all to report suspected unauthorized fills in wetlands or other unauthorized work in waterways and/or wetlands to the Baltimore District Enforcement/Compliance Project Manager for the area.
View current Regulatory Public Notices in the Baltimore District, sorted by comment period issuance date and provided in 'pdf' format. Public Notices are grouped in calendar year and by issuance date. Previous calendar years are archived.
Federally jurisdictional waters of the United States are defined as adjacent wetlands and tributaries to navigable waters of the United States and other waters where the degradation or destruction of which could affect interstate or foreign commerce.
There are two types of JD procedures used by the Baltimore District. Preliminary JDs are advisory in nature and may not be appealed. An approved JD is an official Corps determination that jurisdictional waters of the U.S. are either present or absent on a particular site.
Currently, the Baltimore District authorizes work in waters of the United States under four types of permits: Individual Permits, Letters of Permission, Nationwide Permits, and State Programmatic General Permits. The impact thresholds and descriptions may be found in the Regulatory Program Sourcebook under Permitting.
Mitigating the environmental impacts of unavoidable development actions in the nation's wetlands and other aquatic resources is a central premise of Federal wetlands programs. The Clean Water Act Section 404 permit program relies on the use of compensatory mitigation to offset unavoidable damage to wetlands and other aquatic resources through, for example, the restoration or creation of wetlands.
All of the latest updates to the Regulatory Program.
We at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Regulatory Branch are committed to improving service to our customers and would like to know how well we have been doing. To identify how we can better serve you, we need your help.
Whether you have a question about our program or you are planning to visit one of our offices, please find our contact information here.

Regulatory

The mission of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Regulatory Program is to protect the Nation's aquatic resources, while allowing reasonable development through fair, flexible and balanced permit decisions.

Welcome to the Baltimore District's Regulatory homepage. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has been regulating activities in the nation's waters since 1890. At first, this program was meant to prevent obstructions to navigation, although an early 20th century law gave us regulatory authority over the dumping of trash and sewage. Passage of the Clean Water Act in 1972 greatly broadened this role by giving the Corps authority over dredging and filling in the "waters of the United States," including many wetlands.